Question for Seller

(2006)

Made from family photographs acquired through eBay, Question for Seller features photographs that no one else has bid for. The seller is asked the question: How did you come across the photos and what, if anything, do you know about them? Their replies are as important as the photographs they sell. They allude to disappearing histories, where personal photographs reveal fragments of past lives, through photographic processes that are themselves becoming obsolete.


Question for Seller, 2006

64 270gsm pages, 14 ‘Glassine’ (tissue) sheets, Edition of 1
87 photographs mounted with Archival Photo Black Corners
Various sizes (largest: 21 x 16cm, smallest 3 x 2cm)
Brown Carlton Collection Cover
W: 33cm x H: 42cm D: 3cm

Wild Pansy Press, Leeds 2006


Related Resources

More about the project Question for Seller from exhibition to eBay auction

Featured in Seesaw: Online Photography Magazine Issue 8 Summer 2007

Bird, Nicky. ‘Wanted – New Custodians for Family Photographs: Vernacular Photographs on eBay and the Album as Artwork,’ in S. Arnold de Simine and J.Leal (eds), 171-188, Picturing the Family: Media, Narrative, Memory. Bloomsbury, London, 2018. ISBN 9781474283632